In the days prior to oil and gas heating of houses, the wood stove was an omnipresent fixture in houses, as well as the wood fireplace. Today, with the rise in price of gas and oil heating, the significance of wood heat, both by heating stove and fireplace, again assumes primary importance.
With respect to cutting and splitting wood, the power saw has answered the problem of felling and cutting trees, as well as the branch complexes thereof, into suitable lengths. There remains, however, the problems and work associated with reducing large diameter tree trunks and the like into handleable, carryable and convenient size logs for consumption in stoves and fireplaces. The ancient honored tool in this regard is the simple hand axe, with all its hazards of potential injury to the cutter and hewer of wood. In view of this, a multiplicity of powered or force augmented devices have been developed and are available, to a greater or lesser extent, on the market.
A major problem that arises with respect to log splitters is portability. That is, if all the logs to be split are in one location, then portability is not too important, unless the trunk segments are extremely heavy and difficult to handle. However, this is often not the case and it is very often desirable to be able to not only fell the tree, saw it into sections, but also split the larger diameter sections on the spot. Then the logs may be handled as usable and handleable entities from that point with respect to a central collection spot, if desired.
Basically, log splitting boils down to the application of sufficient force to a wedge-like edge either by muscle power, muscle power plus mass or weight, or hydraulic or gasoline power. What is needed in the present market, it would seem, is a muscle powered device which powerfully and effectively accomplishes the onerous log splitting task, yet has optimum configuration to minimize effort and work on the part of the user, as well as permit convenient and small space storage when not in use. Such a device must, of course, be immensely strong over a long life of use in hard, arduous work. The subject device meets these criteria.